Martina Saric

  • DRC (Doctoral Research Committee) Member, SGSAH
  • Tutor: English Literature (2B: Writing the Body), UoG
  • Tutor: English Literature & Creative Writing (1A and 1B), University of Strathclyde
  • Module Coordinator & Lecturer: Present Day Victorians: Neo-Victorian Film and Fiction, University of Strathclyde (Hons course), Spring 2023

email: Martina.Saric@glasgow.ac.uk 

 

Research title: Thomas Hardy and Philosophy of Senses

Research Summary

INFO

Martina Saric is a PhD researcher and tutor (GTA) in English Literature, at the University of Glasgow. Her work researches Victorian art, literature, and aesthetics, with a particular focus on the writing of Thomas Hardy. Her doctoral project explores sensual and sensorial knowledge, focusing on the body and modes of embodiment from the 19th century to the present. In April of 2022 she was a visiting researcher at the LERMA centre, at the Aix-Marseille University (France), affiliated with their programme: ‘Subjectivity and the Construction of the Visible,’ as well as a part of the co-organising team (under the mentorship of Anne Reynes-Delobel) for the CIVIS short mobility course ‘Transitive Modernities’ (Stockholm, June 2022). Since January 2022 she has been also undertaking an internship with Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH and Monica Callaghan), working on developing SGSAH’s international strategies and partnership outreach. In 2022 she has been awarded the Collaborative Research Award (project lead) for her cross-disciplinary scheme ‘FilmLab: International Cinema in Dialogue’, a series of screenings, events, and lectures to take place from September 2022 at the UoG

Research Summary

Thomas Hardy and the Theory of Sensuality
My project researches the work of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Victorian, and early Modernist art, while drawing on ideas from the philosophy of Nietzsche, Bergson, and Bachelard. The project focuses on sensual vitalism and human entanglement with the natural world, showing how Hardy's work is pertinent in the contemporary context. The exploration of the senses highlights the physical body as a site of trauma, a site of memory and pre-verbal meanings, which has a wider cultural significance.

My work foregrounds re-defined notions of porosity, border of the senses and extension, and offers a new conceptual framework in developing a comprehensive theory of the senses, focusing on the body as a constantly evolving site of creative knowledge

Research Interests

  • Victorian Literature & Art
  • Sensual Vitalism
  • Environmental Humanities
  • Pre-Raphaelites 
  • Continental philosophy (Nietzsche, Bergson, Bachelard) 
  • Myth and Mythopoetics

Publications

Blog Post

  • "Thomas Hardy: Desperate Remedies and Life that Endures," (The Victorianist, Jan 2021), https://victorianist.wordpress.com/2021/01/25/thomas-hardy-desperate-remedies-and-life-that-endures/

Journal Articles

  • A Pair of Blue Eyes: 'Burial Plots and Thomas Hardy’s Restless Dead', Revenant Journal (publication Summer 2024).

  • 'Ptice ljeta,' Croatian Film Journal, Dec 2021

Book & Journal Reviews

  • Synthesis Journal review: ‘Anthropocene Forms and the Victorian Novel’
  • Review of: Sofi Oksanen: Purge, Moderna Vremena, https://mvinfo.hr/clanak/sofi-oksanen-ciscenje
  • Review of: David Foenkinos: Delicacy, Moderna Vremena, https://mvinfo.hr/clanak/david-foenkinos-delikatnost

Supervisors

Grants

Millport Writing Residency, SSGAH Fund, Isle of Cumbria, Scotland, 2023.

Hospitalfield Interdisciplinary Writing Residency, SGSAH funded, Scotland, 2023.

UoG Collaborative Research Fund: for the design and running of the FilmLab project: series of screenings and film talks, 2023 (£2000).

SGSAH Internationalisation Grant: support in Internationalisation Strategy, attendance at CIVIS 'Transitive Modernities' course, Stockholm Sweden, June 2022 (£ 880)

Santander Travel Scholarship: for attendance at CIVIS 'Transitive Modernities' course in Stockholm Sweden 13-18 June, 2022, (£ 500)

Global Connects SGSAH Awards: funds distributed towards organisation, chairing and design of training and talks for Global Connects 2022 programme: events funded include: 'FilmLab:Pre-Launch Event', 'Regenerative Practices' workshop, and 'Saltire Research Showcase', April 2022, (in total of  £ 1520)

Erasmus+Traineeship Fund: for visiting research position at LERMA centre Aix-Marseille University, April 2nd- June 20th (£ 1060)

BAVS Research Funding, for researching Thomas Hardy Archive (The Dorset County Museum), 2022 (£500)

Santander Travel Scholarship, for attending CIVIS short term course: "Modernisms in Transit," at the Aix-Marseille University, France, Aug 2021, (£1000)

Research Support Award, towards fees for registration for the FATHOM seminar: "Energy in Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad's Work," Sept 2021

Conference

Papers Presented

  • 'Hardy's Imagination of Fire: The Return of the Native and the Combustible Nature of Sensuous Matter', Thoma Hardy Conference, Dorchester, England, July 2024.

  • 'The Well-Beloved and Thomas Hardy’s Pursuit of  Pygmalion and Galatea Myth', REVICTO Conference: 'Greece in Victorian Popular Culture', Athens, Greece, 8-9 April, 2022

  • "Outcast Bodies and the Language of the Senses", European Society for the Study of English: FATHOM seminar: "Energy in Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad's Work," Lyon, France, Oct 2021

  • "Thomas Hardy and the Entanglement with Time," University of Glasgow PGR Conference: "Metamorphosis: Transformations Across Time, Culture & Identity," Glasgow, UK, June 2021

  • "Tess the Sun Goddess and the Myths of The Golden Bough,"LOGIA: "Women and God" conference, University of St Andrews, UK, May 2021
  • "The Philosophy of the Senses: Entanglement with Mythological and Geological Time," The Temporal Belongings Network: "The Material Life of Time conference," March 2021
  • "Mythopoetic Imagination: Old Myths in the Age of Progress" at The Fourth International Symposium of English, Croatian and Italian Studies: "Will the Centre Hold?," Split Croatia, Oct 2019

Research Activities

  • FilmLab project lead, on upcoming programme (series of talks, screenings and discussions), UoG, from September 2022
  • Global Connects International Programme: design, delivery and chairing of training events: 'Regenerative Practices', 'FilmLab Pre-Launch Event', 'Saltire Research Showcase', July 2022
  • CIVIS short mobility course: 'Transitive Modernities' (also part of the Co-organising Team and Communication Support), 13-18 June 2022
  • CIVIS and LERMA international internship, Aix-Marseille University, France, April-20 June 2022
  • SGSAH Knowledge Exchange Hub Advisory Board Member, (since 2021)
  • CIVIS: "Modernisms in Transit: Dialogues and Crossings," short mobility course, Aix-en-Provence, France, Aug 2021
  • Organiser of the PGR Seminar: "Insurgent Thoughts: Reading, a Surrogate for Thinking?," University of Glasgow (online), Dec 2020

 

Additional Information

Affiliations

  • SGSAH Doctoral Research Committee Member: Creative Economies Hub, since March 2021
  • CIVIS a European Civic University Alliance
  • Research Assistant on the project "Core Knowledge & Cognitive Pragmatics in the Appreciation, Memory & Communication of Visual Art" and "The Agency Kind of Art," funded by The Templeton Religion Trust and Art Seeking Understanding, project director Dr Justin Gregory, University of Glasgow, Jan-June 2021
  • Research Assistant on the project Collected Letters of Thomas Beddoes, project director Dr Dahlia Porter, University of Glasgow, June-Sept 2021

Martina Saric